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There was a “wake” at Brian Burke’s place because that’s how hockey people deal with the everyday insecurity of their sport — through dark macabre humour.

Losing a job in the sport is felt like a death in the family, and so on Wednesday night there were spirits and libations as would befit an Irish funeral with Burke surrounded by his Maple Leaf hockey lieutenants as he took leave of centre stage in this most intense hockey city.

Don’t lament Burke’s lot in life, although he’s had some terrible situations to deal with in recent years including the loss of his son. Don’t imagine he won’t work again or that the shock and devastation he felt over being fired by the Leafs slightly more than four years after arriving in town as a hockey saviour will last too very long.

If you’re a Leaf fan, however, lament the ridiculous way in which this was done. Lament the way this perennially underachieving organization, even with new ownership in place, talks about winning and then proceeds in a manner that is about anything but winning.

Only the Leafs, you might argue, would stand by during a 113-day lockout with their hockey office in place and then immediately after that lockout ended dismiss the person running that office.

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OK, maybe the sad-sack New York Islanders would do something bizarre like this. But who else? No quality franchises.

This is the first really big sports decision undertaken by the partnership of Bell and Rogers that now controls Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Not only was it done in such a way that should make Leaf fans very worried, it may also be an indication why this corporate partnership of media rivals is destined not to last.

Burke got the axe Wednesday morning because Bell boss George Cope, after months of campaigning for Burke’s dismissal, finally wore out the Rogers suits and Larry Tanenbaum. The deal is that Rogers and Bell will vote as a bloc on all matters, and Cope is the lead actor in this stage play. It took him a while but he got his way and Rogers had to roll with the tide.

You can make the case that Burke didn’t produce the results to keep his job, although 3½ years is really too short a time frame to judge a GM in any sport.

What you can’t make is a case for firing him now. That’s just absurd. It’s downright Ballard-like. It’s like Punch Imlach learning he was out for a second time as Leaf hockey boss when he pulled up to Maple Leaf Gardens and saw his parking spot was gone.

It’s right up there with Steve Stavro denying Cliff Fletcher the chance to bring Wayne Gretzky to town on a cheap contract. It’s right up there with Richard Peddie telling the world that John Ferguson Jr. no longer had the right to make a decision on who would coach the team, even though JFJ was still the GM.

It’s the kind of blinkered hockey-decision-without-hockey-thinking move the Leafs have made too often over the past 20 years — heck, over the last 46 years — and why this team has had such limited success.

Cope didn’t like Burke’s style, his manners, his profanity, his lifestyle. Some people don’t. Burke is a polarizing character, to be sure, and makes no apologies for that.

The Rogers people might not have been in love with Burke either but they weren’t prepared to axe him. Until Wednesday. It was like the decision-makers rolled out of bed, didn’t like their eggs Benedict and decided to fire the GM of the hockey team.

Now Dave Nonis, just as he did in Vancouver nine years ago, succeeds his good friend Burke. But this time it’s more awkward. He may even be pressured to trade youngsters and prospects to acquire 33-year-old Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo.

But the decision had already been made. Burke, who had been scheduled to be on Hamilton Bulldogs owner Michael Andlauer’s plane at 9 a.m. to attend the NHL board of governors meeting in New York to ratify the new collective bargaining agreement, was told not to get on board because he had been removed as GM.

He was skewered less by what he accomplished or didn’t accomplish than by what he said and what he promised. He made a deal for a 21-year-old winger named Phil Kessel early in his tenure, the same Kessel who finished sixth in NHL scoring last season, and gave up high draft picks to get it.

Many saw that as an unnecessary attempt to rush the process. Asked by this space why he did it, Burke said: “Because if I don’t get this team in the playoffs in three years they’ll be all over me.”

And guess what? He was right. Nonis is the 14th person to be named GM over the past 96 years of Leaf history. But nine of those GMs have operated in the last 24 years.

This city has no patience to wait and let one person take his time building a winner, and ownership has become reflective of that knee-jerk impatience.

Bet on it: If Nonis doesn’t make it happen within two years he’ll be gone too.

Not committing to continuity and stability is part of the reason the Leafs have been out of the playoffs since 2004. Now it appears the Bell-Rogers partnership will behave the same way as did its predecessors.

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